Tokyo named top global hospital city

The study by digital healthcare start-up Medbelle sought to identify the leading hospital cities based on a range of criteria, including citizen accessibility.

Tokyo scored highly in areas such as quality of care and accessibility for citizens

Tokyo has been ranked first in a new index of the top 100 hospital cities in the world.

The study, released by digital healthcare start-up Medbelle, sought to identify the leading hospital cities based on data relating to infrastructure in terms of medical workforce, education, quality of care, satisfaction, treatment efficiency and citizen accessibility.

High access score

Tokyo fared best with the highest overall quality of care score in the index, the highest top-ranking hospitals score, as well as a very high access score for all its citizens.

Medbelle points out that a city can boast one world-class hospital, but if the overall medical framework does not offer easy access and high-quality care to all its citizens, then there is still room for improvement.

The start-up said this is why it compiled this ranking, focusing on the overall hospital ecosystem in the area, rather than individual institutions.

To arrive at a final score, the ranking was determined by analysing the following factors within each of the broad categories specified above: hospital beds per capita; nurses per capita; surgeons per capita; mental health specialists per capita; top-ranking medical universities; top-ranking hospitals; satisfaction; treatment efficiency; access; cost of medicine; and discretionary healthcare spending.

“This kind of dataset provides a unique opportunity to benchmark cities’ hospital infrastructure against each other”

According to Medbelle, the results celebrate those cities offering the best overall medical care, as well as creating a benchmark for the rest of the world to understand how to better develop their medical education, accessibility and infrastructure for a healthier future.

“This kind of dataset provides a unique opportunity to benchmark cities’ hospital infrastructure against each other,” said Daniel Kolb, co-founder and managing director at Medbelle.

“Our hope is that this one-of-a-kind dataset can be utilised by the medical world and governmental bodies to pinpoint crucial areas for improvement.”